19 h Opening
20 h Performance between stamp and mars No:7. if the world doesn’t rock us, we rock the world von\ by Ha Za Vu Zu

An exhibition within the framework of UNDISCIPLINARY LEARNING – Remapping The Aesthetics of Resistance.
An art project manifesting in SPACE, CITY, KOWLEDGES and DOCUMENTS
Curated by Janine Halka, Suza Husse, Julia Lazarus.

08 Sep 2016 - 19 Nov 2016
at DISTRICT and at other locations in Berlin

Undisciplinary Learning takes the novel The Aesthetic of Resistance by Peter Weiss(1916-1982) as an impetus to question current knowledge politics at the intersection of artistic, political, and pedagogical practices. In the exhibition, urban interventions, encounters and conversations, education is probed as a mode of political imagination that recognizes heterogeneous forms of knowledge and integrates the body, the city, relationships, and the environment as places of learning. Undisciplinary Learning thereby maps artistic approaches focusing on self-empowering pedagogies – especially from feminist, queer, leftist and decolonial contexts – that radically question hegemonic cultures of knowledge.

Together we screamed, howled, singed, rised up, went down, separated, get together, cut the flow, and flowed together. Through all this time we are grateful that you were with us by incorporating your voice to our voice. We would like to be with you too in this night where we are celebrating our tenth year.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

ISTANBUL: PASSION, JOY, FURY

Galleries 1, 2 and 2 biscurated by Hou Hanru with a team of international curators

The passion for creativityThe joy that emerges from achieving objectivesThe fury of the city

We are continuing our exploration of the cultural milieu of the Mediterranean basin and the relations between the Middle East and Europe. Following the exhibition Unedited History on contemporary Iranian art, MAXXI has reached Istanbul.

An exploration through major worksand new artistic productionwith in-depth examinations and first-hand testimony.

Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury tackles the dynamics, the changes and the cultural demands of contemporary Turkey, a bridge between the western and eastern worlds.

Starting out with the recent protests at Gezi Park, the exhibition examines five major themes: urban transformations; political conflicts and resistance; innovative models of production; geopolitical urgencies; hope.

Açık Stüdyo Günleri// Open Studio Days provides an opportunity for visual artists, designers, illustrators, artist-run spaces and other non commercial independent art organizations to open their doors and embrace the wider creative community and public of Istanbul.

Open Studio Days are the artists' chance to share their work with a curious audience without the need of an institution.

Taking David Thomas’ lecture “The Geography of Sound” as a departure point, this exhibition project brings together artists from eight different countries: Éva Bodnár, Nuria Fuster, Ha Za Vu Zu, Nicolas Jasmin, Santiago Morilla, O, Bernhard Rappold, Franz Schubert, Felipe Talo, Carlos Vasconcelos, Brent Wadden, Felix Leon Westner, Das Wiener Jazzpanoptikum (Pils, Pulsinger, Zykan), and others.All of them investigate sound and music in their work, however the approaches are different. On the one side are fine arts, popular music on the other. Not by chance, it was the art-affine David Thomas, singer of the band “Pere Ubu”, which he classifies as avant-garage, who triggered the idea behind the concept. In his aforementioned wonderfully erratic lecture, he skilfully draws a line from Thomas Alva Edison’s first phonographic recording to Elvis. He specially emphasises the stylistic finesse Edison demonstrated when choosing the words for the first sound recording in history. He spoke “Mary had a little lamb” into the horn. A children’s rhyme already popular in 1876, at the time of the recording. Edison could have easily recited something meaningful, an aphorism, for example. But he decided for the mundane, the everyday.Furthermore, Neil Armstrong is identified as Edison’s disparate twin. Also he had his grand moment in the history of sound recording. According to David Thomas, he thoroughly messed it up. His “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind!” during the moon landing in 1969 sounded pompous, but also clumsy, memorised, and melodramatic in its metaphor.“Big events are best heralded with small words,” concludes Thomas.Time and again, the artistic practice offers – for example, at the beginning of a work (not to mention the quirky fear of the white canvas) or moreover in its titling – moments of pathos and grand gesture, the “Armstrong trap”.However, the solution does not reside in establishing a style of skilful failure. After all, knowing that one can undoubtedly also provoke “big events” should imply to indeed highly value the things one is working on. The reservoir from which both artistic greatness and ease draw from is often the realm of “small words”. Failure can still ensue later on.

In this sense, Edison’s self-ironic saying “I have not failed – I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” inspired the selection of artistic personalities. For all of them experimenting, discarding, hence constant perfecting is the key.

Éva Bodnár, inventor and proponent of Happy Anfang, pursues in her paintings a porous approach to film, music, and language. Brent Wadden favours the weaving loom as an instrument of analytical slowness. Carlos Vasconcelos’ objects and videos seem to have been forged in an alchemic workshop, steeped in the search for purification and punctuated by the roughness of noise. Ha Za Vu Zu are devoted to passionate and performative irony. Bernhard Rappold turns lapsteel guitars into a visual object. Nicolas Jasmin presents painting von Time to Zeit. Das Wiener Jazzpanoptikum usually attends to DJing on Thursdays and during the exhibition to painting home organs. Franz Schubert shows a silent video interpretation of Gerhard Richter’s Sonic Youth record cover.In his video Rem Verso Santiago Morilla mimes the artistic Francis of Assisi and holds a graphic dialogue with trees, rats, and birds. On the harbour of a Chinese metropolis one can follow Felipe Talo’s video attempt to generate a magic triangle between a trumpet player, a signalling freight steamboat, and his own chalk drawing. Teresa Rotschopf alias O shows her new music video 2410. Felix Leon Westner performs between vocals and mural drawing, between diagram and loop, thereby digging into the brittle and fragile nature of pop. In her installations and sculptures the trained dancer Nuria Fuster works with the remnants of our society. From used properties of things she distils human corporeality.(Bernhard Rappold)

In the framework of Vienna Art Week, a performance and concert night takes place on November 21.

Platform 0090 invited HA ZA VU ZU to take part in this exhibition. They will be in residency from 10 till 17 November 2014.

Ha Zu Vu Zu is an artist collective based in Istanbul. The collective acts with an absence or switch of hierarchy to encourage the unpredictable within sound and vision. Ha Za Vu Zu sees itself as a hub of abundant collaboration and exchange of ideas. The groups work lies somewhere between performance and agitprop, humour and the organisation of offbeat evenings. The form is variable, spanning performance, installation, videos and objects (from books, flags and banners to mutated disco balls and assorted ephemera).

Ha Za Vu Zu takes part in Hotel Charleroi with a vocalizing performance which is based on making simple vocals as a choir in the range of language to sound for the video on a big screen. The video is made of images that are captured from tv and internet in relation to everyday life dynamics, urbanism, public movements and soon. The performance is realized with the participants.

Besides Ha Za Vu Zu will realize an installation as well as a music performance.

After the colossal Palais des Expositions in 2012 and the suburb town of Marchienne in 2013, HOTEL CHARLEROI settles in Ville Basse, an area that experiences heavy transformations since a couple of years. The present state of Ville Basse -a field of rubble- offers an ideal point of departure for new reflections about Charleroi, its challenges and possibilities.

From 14th till 16th November 2014, the public from Charleroi and elsewhere will be at the centre of LA FORCE DU CHANGEMENT: a dense program including performances, discussions, workshops and interventions proposed by over thirty contemporary artists and collectives for Charleroi.

The energy gathered during the weekend will take shape in the collective construction of a tower on the site of the future shopping mall Rive Gauche. An ephemeral sign for and from the inhabitants of Charleroi, defying the ravaged area, the city and the weather.